Prinsesa’s Anatomy

On two separate occasions, people who know me personally who have been reading my blog has asked me if I was sad. It came as a surprise, their inquiry. I did not notice that I was being melodramatic, was I really? All I knew was that I was severely short-circuit, the epicenter of a stress catastrophe. Now I stop to ask myself if I am sad. I rerun my last few days and found that I never said I was “actually sad”.

So does that mean I am happy? Well, I never said that. For a fact, I remember telling my closest people more than once in the last few months that I was unhappy.

In the past, my only problem was not eating vegetables; but as time goes by, I feel the psychological junk food I consume every waking day is very high, I now have two reasons for being unhealthy. God help me. I think I am too young to die.

Now I realize what is the difference between being a drama queen and a true attack of depression: it is a matter of consciousness.

I analyze and assess myself on an objective basis, splitting myself in two: a patient and the nurse. If I am to look at the subjective verbalization of the people around me telling me that I am “sad”, objective signs that must be present to validate the claim should be one or a few of the following: loss or a sudden increase in appetite, lack of interest in activities that are usually routine or enjoyed, spacing out unconsciously, a drop in interpersonal relations, anxiety attacks, stress bouts and confusion.

Or in my case, all of the above.

The past days, I have found myself severely out of focus. I would like to say it has only been days, or maybe I have just lost count. The old cabbage seems to be floating in midair sans any content  yet it feels so heavy as if I have been slaving to death.

I am finding it difficult trying to shake my anxieties away. I am not even sure why I have anxiety attacks. It will be my birthday on Saturday; my cheeks should be numb in an anticipatory smile, yet I feel stupidly shaken.

I know I am stressed because last night it felt unbearable I sought for my guide – I watched Kung Fu Panda, again, for the one millionth time. Somehow it felt good, and when I start to feel my anxieties are about to creep up, I recite my line for the day: “You are too concerned with what was and what will be.”

Ahh… now that brought some much needed oxygen.

I started believing that I could be wrong.

PM went to the mall to buy office supplies needed for work. While going through the racks of staplers and punchers, PM saw the Student Regent of the university with her Aunt on the same store.

Student Regent was actually older than PM, and when he introduced me to his Aunt as an instructor in the university, me wearing a tank and Bermudas, Aunt’s mouth practically fell down the floor in surprise.

I might’ve looked like a high school student. LOL. But I don’t care. LOL

Working on the accreditation of the College of Nursing and Midwifery in the university, PM spend the whole day at another campus and slaved till the world spun around my consciousness.

I was designated on Area II – Faculty, with my good friend, Sir Benj, and when lunch time came, we decided to go to a nearby fastfood chain.

While waiting for our order at the counter, Sir Benj played with the drinking straw container, strangling its top cover to make his hands busy. Little did we know that a tiny monster kid on the other counter was watching him intently and maybe, when the kid could not resist what she was seeing, she went up to us and pressed the straw container while telling Sir Benj, “Ganito po gamitin yan o [You get a straw from here like this],” demonstrating flawlessly then saunters triumphantly away.

More than the kid’s surprising helping hands, what made me laugh really, really hard, was when Sir Benj defensively said, “Alam ko naman gamitin to no! Pinapaglaruan ko lang [I know how to use this! I was just playing with it]!”

Hmm… I think kids have been stalking me real good lately!

You might’ve known for long that the art of paper crane folding originated from Japan. Let me tell you something: they came from Brazil – from shadowmoon to be exact!

The flight of the paper cranes took some 1800 Kms to reach me!

I just received the parcel that shadowmoon sent which contains nine paper crane donations for my 1,000 paper crane project.

I think shadowmoon's paper cranes look way better than mine. LOL

I really, really appreciate the effort shadowmoon, thank you so much – to think how far these wings came from! I can imagine you folding them one by one, just like when you are doing your wonderful paper crafts.

If you would recall, I started my paper crane project as an anti-stress technique against the hassles my work environment presents me. I stated that each time I would be stressed out, I would transfer my negative vibe into folding paper cranes until I reach 1,000 by the end of the semester.

Fortunately, I am glad to say the necessity that is to fold paper cranes has decreased dramatically, since I am now able to control my thoughts and emotions better in response to not so healthy energies around me. I think you would be happy to know that my bubble is back and stronger than ever, my claws and whiskers on their proper places.

I stress very little nowadays and I find so much to be grateful for – like receiving paper cranes from a friend! I realized that moving to a new environment would always entail a crisis, that later will be nothing more than a laughing matter.

As I have mentioned before, I have been treating myself to some down by tinkering with Facebook using Kulot’s [my sister's] account, and  recently, to be a better farmer in Farmville, I have been also using my Man’s account to send gifts to Kulot’s account, ain’t I bright? LOL.

I was looking at my Man’s wall and I saw a quiz that his brother just took. The title was ‘are you a stalker, pedophile, murderer, or normal?’. It might sound dark but you know what result I got?

Pineapple Juice Musang Flavor

It said I was a PINEAPPLE. LOL. So how do you like me now?

Also, I would like to share a couple of photos, of my students interning at the local hospital. Today was their last day of duty in my area and it is very likely that it will be a long time until we meet again. Their words and gestures were truly overwhelming and it reminded me so much of why I became a teacher in the first place.

PM's kids

I was thinking of making a separate post about them but I guess I am at a point where I am just so speechless in joy. But looking at their photos, I believe it says it all.

Giving PM a sense of purpose

Sleepy Jin

Amongst the many patients I saw yesterday at the hospital OPD, two struck me most.

One was a beautiful innocent girl who had a huge lump on her left chest. It was still unknown what was contained in that cyst-like lump – we did not have sophisticated machines in our primary hospital – but the doctor said it could be abscess or water, and it could also be malignant or benign, depending on the laboratory work that will present.

As I watch the little girl leave with her mother, it was as if I heard my heart broke into small pieces, looking at the pure innocent face of that little girl and how fragile she was in her early childhood, yet the state of her health – or her life – was so unstable.

It just felt so unfair. Here was a soul who was so young and fresh and had the whole world ahead of her yet was threatened with illnes and suffering, or death. Of course, there is also a chance that everything will be okay, and the sparkle on her eyes before she was out my sight, made me wish that it would be so too.

However, the next patient that stuck with me got a different side of me involved. She came in for anti0rabies shots because apparently, she got bitten by a kitten whom she found in her house and when she was trying to dispose it like some unwanted thrash, the kitten bit her on the arm, the appearance of the wound got her disturbed so she immediately sought medical intervention. Trying hard to keep my tone neutral, I inquired about the state of the kitten, and uncomfortably, she said her kid killed it.

It felt like I went blind for a few seconds because my pupils constricted so much because of anger. I really cannot imagine how inhumane some humans can be in treating animals. I cannot believe how some can call themselves human yet their concern for innocent and helpless animals measures to the emotional range of a monoblock chair. To be honest, I did not want to give that woman her shot, and I did not feel any guilt at all in wishing for rabies to get her. If it was any consolation, th doctor did not allow her to have her shot at our hospital, because her referral from the health care facility where she got her first shot was incomplete and vague.

Inside me, I felt some sense of redemption for that little kitten, whom I know for sure is now playing with a giant ball of yarn and is given warm ear scratches by the Absolute Whiskers up in cat heaven.

My family and friends were stirred by an e-mail, apparently sent by me through my e-mail account, saying that I was in Nigeria and needed help financially because I have lost my wallet and I needed $2500.

Mother Goose told me about it last night and truth be told, my e-mail account has been hacked, and I cannot gain access to it this morning.

It amazes me how much spammers can do. For one, they have active imaginations, faking out stories for who knows how many accounts they use to create scams. My family and friends knew of course it was not me. If that was me, I’d ask for a bigger sum of money. LOL.

To everybody who was on my address book at prinsesa_fajardo, my account has been compromised and you can have the honor to ignore or curse any weird messages that you will receive or has already received.

***

Yesterday, my students at the emergency room received a reality check on what nurses really do.

We had a poisonous snake bite case and our primary hospital did not have anti venom. The patient, who was a mother of two young boys who came with her to the hospital, had to be transferred to Manila, about three to four hours from where we were.

When the woman came in, she could talk and breathe normally, though she said her eyes were blurring. By the time we got her lying on the ER table, as we were starting the IV line and oxygen, she was numb and blind, her speech was slurring and she could not breathe.

It was all very quick, from the time she came in to the time she was transferred. My students were there to see it all and they told me it changed how they looked at nursing – that it required so much strength and compassion at the same time.

One of my students told me she wanted to cry but she knew she couldn’t. She said she was so moved by the way the mother kept on saying, “look after my children, look after my children” time and time again until she could speak no more.

We were informed that the patient died on the road, during transfer, not long after she has left the ER.

I told my students that experiences like this were not uncommon in the hospital setting, and this was just the start of the many life and death scenarios that they would see. If there was anything positive that came out from it, my students said they were motivated to study harder, so that next time a life was in the balance, they would know exactly what to do so that they could help more.

My heart went out to the family of the patient, and to my students, who gave me a glimpse of how beautiful their souls were, for being brave, for being emphatic, for being strong.

It has got to start with a lot of love.

To make a positive impact on this world has been an advocacy of mine, something I wish to accomplish everyday I am conscious about it. LOL.

To be honest, there has never been a time when I felt I was too little to make a change, or too small to leave a mark. It is simple really – I believe that even the smallest, most random acts can change the course of life; after all, when you add a pile of small good things, the end result has got to only be best big things.

Like today, Ma’am PM was back teaching, but this time on the clinical setting. I had my first day of duty as a nurse clinical instructor for the university at a local primary hospital. My students were also sophomores but coming from a different campus. I handled two groups, 22 students all in all, who were also having their first time of clinical exposure as student nurses.

I have only left the nursing academe two years ago, after graduating as a part of class 2007-2008, so it is a fact that how it feels to be a student nurse is not very far from my memory, no matter how much short-circuit it seems to be sometimes. I can perfectly recall how it felt like, to be wearing that hospital uniform, excited and anxious at the same time, eager and fearful all at once.

It did not help that some of the clinical instructors I had certainly had no clue about teaching. Basically, a typical clinical instructor is someone to be feared, someone who is a foe, and it seems, is someone who has made it his or her life’s mission to embarrass you in public.

If it was any consolation, if not for the weird teaching principles and methods I received when I was in college, I would not be a teacher now, with a certificate on professional education I earned just last March. Also, because of all the horrible things I’ve seen, I have made it my mission to be a better clinical instructor – way better.

I made sure I related to my students, made sure that they saw me as a teacher and not as a three-headed monster. I ensured that they were learning and that the learning experience was both fruitful and fun, and more importantly, that it improved their confidence, not only in doing things right, but in being brave enough to try. After all, the essence of nursing is supposed to be caring.

Back in college, I would often hear instructors say that if they would not be mean the student nurses would not follow or would not learn. You know what, I never believed one bit of it then, and with what I’ve seen in my students, certainly more so not now.

It was heart warming, how they evaluated their first day of duty with me, telling me that they learned so much, and that they had so much fun actually working. Seeing their faces, I could not compare mine, nor my groups mates’ then, with how we concluded ours.

My students learned; more than that, they were happy.

But of course, I was happier.